. >> good evening. i'm the director of theyalelawlibraryand i'm here to welcome you to the library booktalk sister i want to thank the founders society for cosponsoring tonight's talk. tonight's program features logan beirne who is the author of a new book on america's first chief executive entitled "blood of tyrants: george washington and the forging of the presidency." this is very much a yale law school block. it began as a paper while logan was a law school student. the paper was written -- after graduation from law school in 2008 and working two years in a law firm, logan returned to yale law school in 2010 as a scholar and began turning the paper into the book that we feature tonight. appropriate laid we have the professor with those to comment on the book. professor is a highly distinguished member of the yale law school factoid. is the author of numerous books, monographs and articles, and several of his books have been featured in previous book club series sponsored by our library. according to a recently published study by my colleague, fred sugar, professor eskridge is

. ratified by the senate orthelawofthe land. and it sounds to me like one of the punchlines of your account, even though washington powers did grow, he did have a republican understanding, which required him to be very attentive to the commitments that were made by the nation. in the 1770s, we were not in position to make international commitments, but we did it with didn't have a lot of statutes on the book, but we have resolutions. would you not say when it washingtons experiences the commander-in-chief has a constitutional obligation to take seriously the commitment the nation has made in conventions like the geneva convention. .. >> i think it's important for the commander-in-chief to be looking at commitments that we make. >> others? more questions? speeches? opinions about canada? [laughter] >> [inaudible]. >> the former dean wants to make a speech about her youth. [laughter] >> i spent many summers canoeing in canada and singing every morning oh, candidate, which is beautiful. for that reason i made a point in junior high school of studying the history of canada, and why i ha

never do that or couldn't do that because ofthelawsinmy political jurisdiction or whatever, we are not allowed to do that. then there's going to be other things when you think, gosh, i never thought about that, i think that would work really good. i'm going to take it back it my jurisdiction. probably over the past few years i've got 500 people i've dealt with, officers that have come to the class and subsequently become gravanis experts and set up programs. almost every program is different. a lot of the basis is the same, the information is consistent worldwide but people will tweak what information they are going to use and how they are going to be allowed to operate. some are in plain cars, some in marked units, it all depends how it's going to go. take the information you get, there's so much good information here today and tomorrow, take the information you want, take it back and integrate it into however you are going to work your program. when we come right down to it, it's not important what you know, it's what you can prove in court. probably every officer sittin

bylawwasamended requiringing property owners it remove graffiti from their property or face a $250 crime. the one success from our program was the council at that time looked at the idea that we can't hold citizens responsible if we're not responsible ourselves, so they created our management program at that time. that includes bylaw enforcement as well as civic clean up and support for property owners. the program expanded again in 2009 to include a cigarette litter reduction program. we have a huge problem in our city with cigarette litter. we found that through our litter audits that we have done, we have a higher rate of cigarette litter in our cities compared to other cities in canada. expanded again in 2010 to include needle disposal and i said in the other session, this is what i am escaping from in edmonton right now. yay, san francisco. so we have a snow angel program where we ask citizens to voluntarily shovel the snow off their neighbor's lawns. so these are all the programs offered by the capital city clean up program. we started in 2005 as part of the waste man

by will you -- must include the contributions of the transgendered?bylaw. youwill have to have pages on transgendered contributions. people who were crossed over sex, or dressed in the other sex. clothing. isn't that absurd? isn't that totalitarian? i thought the purpose of the textbook was to tell the truth, not make groups feel good. but as i point out in the book, leftism is overwhelmingly rooted in feelings. >> host: dennis prager is the author. "still the best hope" is the name of his recent best seller. louis from florida, you're on the air. you're talking with dennis prager. >> caller: i'd like to ask mr. prayinger and his ilk what he just said about truth, why should people believe the bible when that's the biggest novel ever written? who believes the earth is 5,000 years old? how can you follow a book that tells you the world is 5,000 years old and hisclass commentary about the christian schools and the seminary, how does he say something like that and he wants to be honest? i know this man is a right winger, and he wouldn't fifth credit to anybody, but my main question is,

human rationality. people do all kinds of really stupid things. we enactstupidlawssometimesthat a lot of people agree on more because certain interest groups influence others. look at the gun legislation. yeah it's for the failure to enact it is driven by the economic interest of a certain small bunch of businesses but is that really why a huge number of other individuals who believe that's a good thing to do or wildly misinterpret the second amendment because they feel it within themselves. with regard to slavery and you jumped off from that, one of the things that became and has become clear to me the more i have delved into the world of the slave owner it's self and indeed the pre-emancipation north where it wasn't really all that different, is that a lot of people really liked slavery. they liked it. yes it was profitable but it wasn't always all that profitable and a motivator particularly in the 19th century was much of the south it was up into the respectable middle class to own a slave. it gave you a status in the stature that you might not have otherwise so why did